Speak
by rantandrumour
Summary: Unable to speak, Alex is a prisoner surrounded by the stark white walls. Can she ever be set free? Oneshot


**Thanks to Rolephant for checking the first half of this.  
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A stark white wall. An unchanging, stark white wall. She longed to put some colour on it, a dash of red perhaps. No, not red. Red was the colour of her flat. She had to separate herself from this place. Only then could she really go home.

He had called her back. She was with Molly, with the one that meant everything, and he called her back! Just so he could get himself out of jail. It didn't matter. He was still in a cell, awaiting trial. The rest of the team, they now looked at her as a traitor. It was not her fault. She had given no evidence toward the fact that Gene had meant to shoot her. The trouble was, she had given no evidence against that fact either.

Alex Drake had not spoken in nearly six months. In fact, it had been so long, she wasn't even sure if she could anymore. She did not care. This surprised her. There was one point in her life that she enjoyed the sound of her own voice. She'd talk nonstop, just to know that there was someone there, that she wasn't completely mad.

She had no clue if she was mad or not now.

That first bullet, the one that flipped her whole life upside down when it passed through her skull. Had that sent her mad? If she weren't, why was she here? Why wouldn't she let herself get to Molly? She had to be mad, to stay away from Molly.

There was a mirror on the other side of the room. Alex looked at her reflection, a gaunt shadow of what it once was. Her cheeks had hollowed out, and the bones in her arms could clearly be seen. She knew that if she raised her blouse, her ribs would poke out from her now concave stomach. They tried to get her to eat, but she couldn't. All food tasted bland to her, and if she did eat, her stomach would not settle.

So they said she was starving herself.

She thought of Luigi's, of the wine and pasta that had once made her mouth water. Now, it only made her think longingly of the way things used to be. Back before Operation Rose. Before she remembered 2008 with such stunning clarity. Before the desire to reach Molly had nearly killed her.

She did not care that she had nearly died in 1982. For a few, short moments, she had gotten to see Molly. She had seen her face, the face that she had had so much trouble remembering. The small grin. The bright blue eyes. Every feature, Alex drank in. Then he had appeared. Screaming at her on the screen of the television. Yelling at her to wake up. She'd resisted. She'd refused. She'd run from his face.

But it hadn't mattered.

Somehow, she had come back, she'd left Molly behind. And she couldn't forgive herself for that. How could she have left Molly again? After over a year of trying, fighting to get back, it had all been for nothing. Now she was here again, only now with a scar in her abdomen, and no Gene Hunt.

He was the only one she had missed.

Shaz, Ray, Chris, Viv, they didn't matter as much as Gene. She had cared about them, yes, but she had not missed them the way she had Gene. When she was in 2008, she avoided his face because he represented everything that she tried to avoid. He was the essence of 1982, the driving force. It was obvious it was him; otherwise he wouldn't have called her back. And she would still be with Molly. Still, she loved him. Even though he had ripped everything from her, even rendering her incapable of speech.

At first, the doctors had just thought it was shock that made her unable to speak. But as the days wore on, it became apparent that something else was wrong. "Something psychological," they muttered to themselves, as though she couldn't hear. Stupid, stupid men. Just because one could not talk did not mean they could not hear. It did not mean she had no feelings. But they didn't care. At least not at the hospital.

Alex stared at the wall once more. Blue, she decided suddenly. She liked the colour blue. Blue was the colour of Molly's eyes, of Gene's eyes. She shook her head. She couldn't think about him. She'd never see him again. She'd as good as sent him to prison. And attempted murder had a long sentence. Twenty five years, she knew, was a fair sentence for it. And because it had been on a police officer, he might get longer. Not that she was a police officer anymore. They hadn't let her return to work. Silent DI's did not work well in the MET.

All because she could not break her silence.

She wanted to. She wanted to scream. But she couldn't. She was trapped. Trapped inside her own head. What she had been afraid of when she first came to this place had finally happened.

She stood, and looked out the window, noting how loosely her skinny jeans fit. They had once clung to her every curve, and she had loved that about them. Now, as Gene would say, her arse was bony. It didn't fill out the jeans the way it used to. She needed a new pair, a smaller size. Maybe a few sizes down.

She stared aimlessly out the window. It was a pretty view. A tall tree stood, covered in green leaves. It was now summer. She wanted to walk out among the trees, to feel the grass on her bare feet. To feel the sunshine warm her face.

But she couldn't.

She was a prisoner in more ways than one. She was stuck inside her own mind, stuck without the ability to eat. Slowly, she believed herself to be going mad. She used to talk her thoughts out on her Dictaphone. Talking was the way she organised herself, even if it drove Gene mad.

Madness. She was surrounded by it.

People called her mad. If she had to stay here much longer she would become what they thought. She wanted to fight and rage at the world, at the people who were keeping her here, but she knew it wouldn't matter. They would just sedate her to calm her down. Or, if he was there, send in the psychologist, who would encourage her to talk through her problems.

But Alex would just stare past him, to the wall which was so bare, so white.

Green. Even green would be better than the white. It was so clinical. Green would remind her of the outside, where she was not allowed to go. No, they wouldn't let her out because she had tried to run the first few times she had been let out. She couldn't help it. They could go home at the end of the day. They got a breath of fresh air in the morning, at night.

They kept her locked in a cage.

Could they not understand how this felt? Many nights, she cried herself to sleep out of overwhelming loneliness and sorrow for what she had lost. They didn't care. They'd just make a note in her chart and move on to the next bed, to the next room, to the next madman.

Crying was not uncommon here. Alex heard it every night. Some nights it was the quiet weeping of herself, others the frantic wailing of someone down the corridor. No one was happy here. Not even the staff. They put on fake grins to try and coerce the "patients" into a better mood, but it never worked. At least not for her. No smile had crossed her face since she had woken up. No one could improve her mood. For the past six months she had sat in silence, unsmiling at the world which had tried to smile back.

She had struggled against coming here. They had forced her though to come to this hell hole, after catching her ripping the IV from her arm, bleeding everywhere. She had passed out from blood loss before they could staunch the flow, but when she awoke, there was an IV in her other arm, and her wrists had been tied down.

Then they told her they were moving her, to this place, to this hell hole. She had fought, when they removed the restraints, but they had sedated her.

"_Suicide Risk," _they had labelled her. _"Sometimes violent."_

She couldn't shake the thought that the only way she'd get back to Molly was by dying in this world. But now, she was stuck in this place, which watched her every second of every day. The only way to die now was to starve to death, something they appeared to be letting her do. She knew that they would wade in with supplements soon, to keep her alive, to keep her organs from failing completely.

She laughed bitterly to herself. There was nothing they would be able to do in the end. They would all have to die sometime. And she'd be among them. Hopefully, she would be out of this place before she did. She didn't want to die between these stark white walls.

There was the sound of voices coming down the corridor. Alex paid them no mind. It was probably the doctor and one of the nurses. She sat back down on the sofa in the room that held the telly, putting her chin on her knees, staring at that blank white wall. She never looked at the television. It failed to entertain her in any way, and if she started touching the screen whispering her daughter's name, they would keep her here even longer.

So she stared at the walls.

Orange. A peach-ish orange. Soft and gentle, but vibrant. She liked that colour. She should put that on the walls.

It had become her game, to assure herself she was sane. Every day, she would sit and stare at the walls, deciding which colour she wanted, until her room was unlocked, until she could lay on her bed for yet another restless night. She didn't know why she played the game. Each night, she'd decide on the same colour.

Purple. Purple had been Molly's favourite colour. What a way to commemorate her daughter. Painting a room in the loony bin after her.

People entered the room behind her. Alex didn't move. It was probably just time for someone's appointment, their therapy. Maybe it was her time for an appointment. The psychologist would take her to his office then to try and talk to her about what she was feeling, to try to make her talk. He didn't understand her. She didn't expect him to. She refused to write on paper, and since her voice no longer worked, there was no way he could know.

"Alex?" his too-kind voice said quietly.

She didn't turn. She never turned to him. She hated him. He was a farce. He shouldn't have a degree in psychology.

"Alex, you have a visitor."

Visitors? She never had visitors. Shaz, Ray, and Chris never came to see her. She tried to convince herself that she didn't care. She had betrayed them by not helping the Guv out, by not keeping him out of jail.

"Can you turn and say hello Alex?"

When was this bastard going to realise that she couldn't talk?! How could she say hello when her voice refused to cooperate?! Alex didn't move, continuing to stare at the blank white wall.

"She refuses to cooperate most of the time," the man said to her visitor. She could picture her psychologist in her mind.

He would standing there, eyes smiling laughingly, full head of black hair immaculately combed as always. He would have on a nice suit that buttoned just a little too tightly around the middle. "The only reason we let you is because they said you might get a reaction from her," she heard him say. They wouldn't. It didn't matter who the person was. She would not move her eyes from that wall. "Good luck," her psychologist said, voice fading already.

Her visitor sat across from her, but she still looked past him, drinking in details out of the corner of her eyes.

The man wore a stark white shirt and black trousers. He had sandy blonde hair, but she could not make out the details of his face. _"Another shrink?"_ she thought to herself.

"'Lo, Bolly," the man said quietly said quietly. Her stomach dropped, and her mind immediately sprang into action. This didn't make sense. How was Gene here? Alex continued to look past him. She couldn't meet his eyes. He could now see what she had become. He sat in silence with her for several minutes, just staring at her.

"Never thought I'd see the day when you were completely silent," he said softly. "Thought I'd rejoice in that, but its awful Bolls. And you can't even look at me. Because I did this to you. If I hadn't shot you, then you wouldn't have ended up like this, in this place. And I wouldn't have had to spend the last six months in a prison cell."

She still could not look at him. It was too painful. He continued, searching her face, searching for a reaction.

"I was found not guilty. I don't know how. Everyone saw me shoot you. Everyone heard me threaten to kill you. But I've been found not guilty, and offered my job back."

Not guilty. That was good. That was very good. He reached up, and turned her chin, showing himself both sides of her face clearly.

"They said you'd not been eating, that you'd lost some weight. You haven't just lost a little weight. Bolly, you look like a skeleton."

Alex looked down at the ground, tears forming. She knew what she looked like. She had to see it every single day.

"Oh...shit. Bolls, I didn't mean it!" She knew he wasn't trying to be cruel. This was what she looked like. She was a skeleton. She was unable to eat, and this was how her body had responded.

Gene sat next to her on the sofa.

"Where'd your fight go? Where's my Bolly?"

She stared at the wall, thinking. It had been sucked out of her. She had been growing weaker by the day. Headaches plagued her, exhaustion was her constant companion. She couldn't fight anymore. It was time to just stop, to accept that she was stuck here, in this hospital, for the rest of her days. She'd never be let out until she talked, and she would never talk again.

She focussed completely on the wall again. Blue, she decided. Blue would be the best colour.

"Alex, please," Gene whispered.

What had happened to him? Where was the Manc Lion? Had prison ripped that out of him? Had it sucked his know-it-all attitude away, like this place, this prison, had sucked the life out of her?

"Just...speak. Anything." He was pleading with her. She stared at the wall, thinking of all they had been through before Operation Rose, before he had called her back. She knew that she loved him. But she knew she couldn't speak.

"One word. Just...call me a bastard. A tosser who can't aim a gun. A murderer! Anything!" Each word grew more desperate.

"I can't."

Gene stared at her in shock as she jumped in surprise. The words were whispered, were hoarse, but they hung in the air. Gene's mouth hung open, slowly transforming into a smile.

"I can't...call you that. You didn't mean to." Her voice was quiet, barely audible over the television, but the words were there.

He didn't. He didn't mean to shoot her. He didn't know she was in 2008. He didn't mean to call her back from her daughter. He just wanted her back, alive. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see a weight lift off his shoulders as he heard her words, but he still had a haunted presence.

"How can you say that? I threatened you the night before. If I had just listened..."

"Who'd listen to a madwoman?" Alex asked bitterly. It sounded odd to hear her own voice, but oddly reassuring.

"You're not mad, Alex."

"Then why am I here?" Not just the psychiatric hospital, but this world. Why was she here? Gene did not know the depth in her question, but pulled her toward him.

"Just because you couldn't speak doesn't mean you're mad. Even though you pulled that IV from your arm, you shouldn't have come here."

"How would you know that? You've been in jail for six months."

"Chris, and Ray, they let me know everything."

"How would they know what's going on? I haven't seen them in months."

"You didn't know? They haven't allowed you visitors."

This was a shock to Alex. She had been spiralling because she believed that no one cared, even though she didn't want to admit it.

"Why did they let you in then?"

"I'm the Manc Lion. I get my way." She saw him smile at her, out of the corner of her eye, but she could not return it. "You're still mad at me." Alex turned at his words, looking at him in complete shock, staring as she took him in fully. Gene's sandy-blonde hair was longer than when she last saw him. His silver-blue eyes shone with excitement as she looked at him, but there was a darkness, a haunted look to them. He was thinner than she remembered, but six months with prison food could do that. His shirt was crumpled, as though it had been thrown carelessly on the floor, and his trousers were in much the same condition. No jacket covered his shoulders, and no tie snaked itself around his neck. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

"I was never mad at you. I would have saved you that day, Gene, but..." she trailed off, now unable to take her eyes off of him.

"Thank you Bolly." The darkness had disappeared from his eyes completely. He pulled her up from the sofa, wrapping her in his enormous embrace, before pulling her away and wiping the tears from her eyes, smiling at her.

"Now that we've got you talking and me forgiven, how about we try to get some meat on that scrawny arse of yours, yeah?"

Alex laughed, breaking into her first smile in six months. Gene embraced her once more, and she knew that one day, she'd be out of this prison. One day, the world would work itself out, and she would stay until it decided to, enjoying herself until she was finally called home.

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A/N Thank you to David Tennant for being a brilliant actor in the nineties (not that he isn't now) and starring in a show that helped me write this! It was called Takin' Over the Asylum, which was shown in 1994. You can find it on Youtube. Its six episodes of brilliance.

Also, I have no idea if they would actually have a psychologist at a psychiatric hospital, but I'll take artistic licence for that :P

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**Rant**


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